By Naama Yahalom-Mack

Figurines are not uncommon in the Southern Levant, but few can be plausibly suggested to be of kings. But Tel Abel Beth Maacah, a 35-acre site in northernmost Israel that was settled throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, may have produced just such an image.

Abel Beth Maacah in relation to Tel Dan. Prepared by Robert Mullins.

Tel Abel Beth Maacah looking northeast. Mt. Hermon in the background. Photography by John Monson.

Tel Abel Beth Maacah looking southeast towards the Huleh Valley and Golan Heights and showing the three primary excavation areas. Photography by www.mgketer.org

The unique and important find at Tel Abel Beth Maacah is a small and exquisite head of a bearded male made of a glazed silicate material called faience. The head was found in a monumental building, possibly a citadel, constructed on the highest point of the tell during the Iron Age IIA.

Area B looking northwest. The yellow lines help identify the main walls of the structure, possibly a citadel, that extended to the south. The eastern closing wall is clearly visible.

Faience head from Area B. Photo by Gabi Laron.

To date, the excavated part of the building comprises a row of rooms along the northern end of this structure, bordered by a courtyard. Radiocarbon dating of charred olive pits from the floor of the room in which the head was found provided a date within the 9th century BCE.

The head measures 5.5 × 5 cm and has carefully executed features, including glossy black tresses combed back from a headband painted in yellow and black and a manicured beard of similar style and color as the hairdo. The tint of the skin is light green. The almond-shaped eyes and the pupils are lined with black and the pursed lips lend the figure a look that is part pensive, part stern. The tip of the nose and the beard are broken and it is difficult to say whether the head was broken off at the neck. This is an important question, as it would indicate whether the head was part of a larger figure or was created just as a head.

Faience is a material known since the 4th millennium BCE or even earlier and was common in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, characterized by a colored glazed exterior. It is similar in composition to ancient glass, but unlike glass it is made with lower temperatures and does not melt. Instead, its particles “stick” together in a process called sintering. Basically, fine sand (or some other form of quartz) is ground together with salts and different minerals that are used as colorants, and water is added. The resulting paste can be squeezed into a mold or shaped into a form.

There are several ways of producing the glazed exterior. In one of the procedures, the object is left to dry and the salts carrying the colorants migrate to the surface creating a glazed colored surface upon heating. Another method would be to create the object from the paste and then add the coloration by dipping and painting. X-ray fluorescence analysis of a different part of the head showed that for the greenish color of the skin, copper was added to the paste, while manganese was used for the black hair. We hypothesize that the greenish tint is the result of copper migrating towards the surface, while the black color was created by mixing manganese with a some of the paste and applying it to the head with a brush, before heating.

To date, the object remains one of a kind. There are no exact parallels. Other bearded male heads are known in the Iron Age, but these are usually made of clay and are very crude. None are naturalistic like the Abel Beth Maacah figure. Several contemporary bearded male heads made of faience were found in the north of Israel, in sites such as Tel Dan and Tel Yoqne’am. However, these are of different styles and none resembles our head in style or quality.

Its naturalistic depiction raises the possibility that a specific individual is being portrayed but the figure could also very well be a general depiction of how the Egyptians viewed Asiatics (including Canaanites) – bearded and wearing a striped head band – particularly during the Ramesside period. An excellent example is seen on a group of faience tiles from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu depicting Egypt’s enemies, a Canaanite among them. But unless the head was an heirloom from Ramesside Egypt, some 300 years earlier than the archaeological context in which it was found, its origin should be sought closer at hand. Since Asiatics with this generic ‘look’ were naturally depicted also in Phoenician and Syrian art in a wide range of media, the object could have been produced in different parts of the Levant. The ability to produce faience was definitely not restricted to Egypt during this time. Thus, technologically and stylistically, the head could have been a product of either Phoenicians, who had a taste for the Egyptian style at that time, as well as by Syrians or Arameans whose art also reflected such images. Notably, in other rooms of the building and in the courtyard, several Phoenician pottery vessels were found, including an exceptionally high-quality painted storage jar, as well as a clay figurine head of a female in Phoenician style. The location of Abel Beth Maacah on the border between the Israelite kingdom and the kingdom of Aram-Damascus alludes to a possible northern connection. Whatever the origin, the question remains: but why was it produced?

The tidy hair-do with the concealed ears and specifically the high craftsmanship and the uniqueness of the object, indicate that the object the head was specially made for something or for someone. Was this the head of a royal figure or a dignitary? And if so, could we be staring at the face of an historic figure from the 9th century BCE?

Naama Yahalom-Mack is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a co-director of the excavations at Tel Abel Beth Maacah.
This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 859/17).

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